I'm guessing too many posts were in the wrong forum. By putting the general forum at the bottom people have to scroll past the specialist forums first and might find a more appropriate place for their post.

In addition to what Miles mentioned, there is an impending Forums reorganization. Hopefully this will help minimize posts to the incorrect forum._________________At some point, you gotta stop with the ribbons and let some people go. -- Bill Burr

Miles is correct. If anybody else has comments on how to improve the layout of the forums, Gentoo Forums is a great place to express them, which is where this thread is going._________________For every higher wall, there is a taller ladder

Going on the assumption that this will be the thread to discuss the pending forum reorganization, here is how I would rearrange the forums If I Were Boss, taking in to consideration the desire to reduce the total number of forums (around 20 instead of almost 30 which we have now), reduce the number of posts in "All things gentoo" (by making sure mosts posts have an appropriate home), and reduce the number of posts that get put in the wrong place.

Official news & announcements - Same as it is currently.

Newbies & Installation - These often coincide, and posts about installation frequently end up in Newbies and vice versa. It makes sense to combine them. Probably a couple sticky posts at the top to point people at proper spot to search for help (docs, forum search, faq, man, google). Also a couple stickies that catch people who fail to find the FAQ, "Can't su", "Cant' boot off CD", etc. If they see a post right near the top that says "I can't su to root", they'll think "Oh, I'm having the same problem, maybe I can find the answer there." Obviously, it doesn't make sense to put the whole FAQ in form of stickies, but a couple to nail the really common ones won't hurt.

Compilers, compiling & CFLAGS - I think this should be its own forum. It's a pretty good sized topic and having its own forum would take a lot of posts out of All Things Gentoo, and it could absorb the gcc3 forum as well.

Hardware & Kernel issues - I think there should be SOME place to put all the Kernel posts, and more often than not, hardware issues and kernel issues go hand in hand. Also, I think the Laptop forum could be folded in here. Then again, perhaps the Kernel ought to be its own forum, and Hardware and Laptops should be combined - or maybe they should be 3... I don't frequent the Laptop forum, so I don't know what sort of activity they get their on your average day.

Networking & Security - Same as right now.

Desktop Environments - Same as now but further down the list as it seems to me that it gets lots of off-topic posts.

Gamers & Players - Same as currently.

Portage, emerge & ebuilds - This is a big topic and deserves its own forum. It would also suck up most of "bugs" and "suggestions" (at least all those Portage and ebuild related).

Other Things Gentoo - Basically a name change for "All things Gentoo" which emphasises that it's for issues that don't fit the other forums, not just anything Gentoo related. This should be buried way down the list somewhere inconspicuous so that people will have to look over the other forums first.

General Linux - Anything not specific to Gentoo. The "Programming" forum I think fits well under here.

Tips, Tricks & Documentation - Supercedes the current Tips & Tricks group and Documenation group. The Documentation type posts (i.e. the ones written like the ones in the current Documentation group), would be made sticky.

Gentoo on non-ix86 platforms - These forums are fairly small, and can probably be combined, though some of their regular posters might be upset with me. (-:

International Users - These can stay the same.

Gentoo Forums - Posts like this.

Other News, Praise - Maybe they aren't related enough to be combined, or maybe they could even be folded in with the "Off topic" group.

Newbies & Installation - These often coincide, and posts about installation frequently end up in Newbies and vice versa. ...

I also agree.

phong wrote:

Compilers, compiling & CFLAGS - I think this should be its own forum. It's a pretty good sized topic and having its own forum would take a lot of posts out of All Things Gentoo, and it could absorb the gcc3 forum as well.

I'm not sure this would be large enough for a single forum. I would probably say that it should be expanded to Customization - Flags and Files. This would cover compiler flags, USE variable settings, dotfiles, and other customization files for gentoo like make.conf.

phong wrote:

Hardware & Kernel issues - I think there should be SOME place to put all the Kernel posts, and more often than not, hardware issues and kernel issues go hand in hand. Also, I think the Laptop forum could be folded in here. Then again, perhaps the Kernel ought to be its own forum, and Hardware and Laptops should be combined - or maybe they should be 3... I don't frequent the Laptop forum, so I don't know what sort of activity they get their on your average day.

This is a really good idea, but I strongly support leaving laptops as it's own forum. There are a lot of hardware issues there, but they would be very easy to confuse if they were thrown in a forum with a lot of non-laptop hardware. It's nice to have a forum devoted to laptop-specific problems.

phong wrote:

Networking & Security - Same as right now.

I agree.

phong wrote:

Desktop Environments - Same as now but further down the list as it seems to me that it gets lots of off-topic posts.

I sympathize with this. I know there are a lot of real hard problems with setting up X and other graphical things, but there are also a lot of fun things that people like to do and then share regarding screenshots and multimedia. It's nice to have a bunch of people on the same distrobution as you to share them with and to get tips from. I would say that this should be two forums. Perhaps these: Technical Graphics Issues and Desktop Customization. I can certainly see a lot of cross posting, but at least we'd be able to move posts to the right place for people looking to fix a problem or customize something.

phong wrote:

Gamers & Players - Same as currently.

I agree.

phong wrote:

Portage, emerge & ebuilds - This is a big topic and deserves its own forum. It would also suck up most of "bugs" and "suggestions" (at least all those Portage and ebuild related).

I don't know if I like having suggestions in the same place as people who are trying to get help, but I like the idea of splitting up All Things Gentoo into two forums with one being focused on Portage, emerge, and ebuilds. I would just as soon all the suggesstions go into Other Things Gentoo. This would also be a good place for the semi-off-topic rumor filled posts that will continue to occur.

phong wrote:

Other Things Gentoo - Basically a name change for "All things Gentoo" which emphasises that it's for issues that don't fit the other forums, not just anything Gentoo related. This should be buried way down the list somewhere inconspicuous so that people will have to look over the other forums first.

Not a bad thought. I would certainly mention that this is the place for suggestions in the description though.

phong wrote:

General Linux - Anything not specific to Gentoo. The "Programming" forum I think fits well under here.

I really like the idea of adding General Linux and Programming. There are a lot of things that could fall into both of these categories. Specific gentoo programming questions could go to Portage, emerge, and ebuilds.

phong wrote:

Tips, Tricks & Documentation - Supercedes the current Tips & Tricks group and Documenation group. The Documentation type posts (i.e. the ones written like the ones in the current Documentation group), would be made sticky.

This isn't a bad thought, but I don't know if I would make the Documentation topics sticky. I would lock them. I would also make sure that this isn't a place for questions. I would think that any new post that didn't start with a serious tip would be moved or killed. The only thing is that it's really hard to justify letting a good Document fall to oblivion just because no one can post to it and keep it near the top. Maybe they should remain separate.

phong wrote:

Gentoo on non-ix86 platforms - These forums are fairly small, and can probably be combined, though some of their regular posters might be upset with me. (-:

I don't really like this idea. It's kinda like the Laptops forum. They really need to remain separate in order to be effective and not annoying.

phong wrote:

International Users - These can stay the same.

Gentoo Forums - Posts like this.

Other News, Praise - Maybe they aren't related enough to be combined, or maybe they could even be folded in with the "Off topic" group.

I agree with all of these. I think a lot of the Other News posts are just "Here's a new interview with drobbins!" or "Here's a new review of Gentoo!".

phong wrote:

Off Topic - I think it is safe to combine Off the Wall and /dev/null.

This isn't a bad thought. I've never understood what the difference was between the two anyhow. I like the idea of having a place to just chat for the sake of chatting. Besides, without this I'll have to do homework when the semester starts. _________________if i never try anything, i never learn anything..
if i never take a risk, i stay where i am..